Hitachi's Cutting-Edge Technologies to Be Available for Prototyping with Customers in a New Open-Laboratory

Promoting Social Innovation Business through a new collaborative creation space

TOKYO, Nov 30, 2016 - (JCN Newswire) - Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE: 6501) today announced the establishment of an open-laboratory within the Yokohama Research Laboratory (YRL) to conduct prototyping and proof-of-value with customers - a part of the collaborative creation process - to realize open innovation. Operation will begin from December 2016. The open-laboratory is composed of three laboratories to develop new application technologies for specific business areas, and two laboratories to develop platform technologies that cut across different business areas. And it is equipped with cutting-edge technologies and development environments for the respective fields. Through collaborative creation in the open-laboratory, Hitachi will develop advanced technologies to resolve challenges in society, and thus promote the expansion of Social Innovation Business.

Hitachi is promoting collaborative creation whereby the challenges faced by customers are shared and innovative solutions to resolve those issues are created together. In October 2015, a co-creation space was opened within the Global Center for Social Innovation - Tokyo, located in Akasaka, to promote collaborative creation based on NEXPERIENCE - a systematized customer collaborative creation process with unique methodologies, tools, and spaces to foster the collaborative creation process using design thinking in the process of customer co-creation.

In the collaborative creation space, co-creation is conducted from upstream including the discovery of future business opportunities and analysis of management issues. In contrast, the newly established open-laboratory will conduct prototyping of application or platform technologies and verify value once the business or the challenge has been specified. The open-laboratory is composed of five laboratories: (a) Open Automation, (b) System Modernizing, (c) Transportation Analytics, (d) Data Analytics Platform, and (e) Security Operation, and is equipped with cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, analytics, robotics, IoT and security and development environments necessary for the respective fields, enabling customers to experience first-hand the benefit of Hitachi's cutting-edge technologies, as well as being able to jointly pursue its integration into actual systems and operations. Hitachi will pursue technology development in applications and platforms contributing to the creation of future-oriented innovations including the resolution of future societal issues by prototyping and verifying value together with co-creation partners.

As well as resolving the challenges faced by customers or society, the cutting-edge technologies and innovations developed at the open-laboratory will be integrated on Hitachi's IoT platform "Lumada" with the aim of providing them to a range of customers.